A discussion of splash pages and how they are not a design element that supports a profitable search engine optimization strategy.
One of the hottest web site design crazes on the Internet are splash pages. A splash page is a web page that is completely or partly animated. You could think of it as being an animated book cover. These pages can consist of just a few words, just a graphic, a companys logo and also many shifting images. Music is also usually a component of a well-designed splash page.
Usually your user has to do a lot of clicking in order to get through the splash page process. If you are on a web site that starts with a long introduction and there is a link called Skip Intro on it then you have encountered a true blue splash page.
There is some debate about whether or not splash pages are a good idea. It is good if you are a bigger company that needs to branded then the addition of an introductory splash page to your site is not necessarily going to hurt your business. However if your site is not a household name it is probably best to stay away from splash pages. Splash pages displace the first page (which contains your real content) and the...